At Close of Day
by April Feldspar
Summary: Just how did Murphy Cooper convince the entire human race to launch into space, especially with Professor Brand's deception discovered and no idea what happened to the Endurance? The solution to the gravity equation is only the first step on the journey to save mankind. Along the way Murph also struggles to keep her brother and his family from falling apart.
1. Chapter 1

**At Close of Day**

 _Do not go gentle into that good night,  
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;  
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.  
_― Dylan Thomas, _Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night_

The dust shifted, dancing in the soft, meager light. It rained and whirled. The air was infused with it and carried it to the wood of the floor, where it lay in an untold message. The word spilled from the tessaract, whipping through the universe like gravity. It bore evidence of a father's for his daughter, but it wasn't for her eyes. It was for his and so it could spell disaster for the civilization drilling through space towards its own past salvation. Time was infinitely knowable but not infinite. Like a storm tearing through a city and obliterating everything in its way, time committed its ravages out of no spite. The cruel paradox at time's core was just its nature: if Cooper stayed, he would never send their revered rescuer the data. They would not even die. They would have never even existed. Millennia in time. A new civilization. It would all go away. Vanish without a chance to be.

# # #

The dust shifted. The air burnt with it and the scent of smoldering corn. It smelled of death and decay. Of loss and of nowhere to go. But the tiny, black arm of the watch ticked. And Murphy Cooper understood. And then she wrote. Time was not an enemy. Time was knowable.

# # #

Murphy stood vigil over her nephew's hospital bed. The boy would have extensive lung scarring, but otherwise he would be just fine. His mother was slightly worse but stable, resting in the adjoining room. Given what the doctors had initially thought, it was a near miracle. One that still had to stand in the shadow of that currently wrapped around her wrist. In under an hour, Murphy had gone from despair-fueled determination to save a seemingly doomed mankind to the full-blown elation of discovery. Once an ill-afforded luxury, hope now bloomed into tangible means of escape and survival. The monumental task of launching the tattered remains of humanity into space still lay ahead but was no longer an impossible dream. It could be done. They were able to save themselves, no longer condemned to a painful, slow death on their waning home. A new one awaited them somewhere, out there, most likely in another galaxy. Murphy and her generation were not to see it, but her nephew would. She was certain of it, as certain as she was that her father would be back someday, certain as she ever was of it, even when she had hated him for leaving in the first place.

Doctor Brand had been afraid of time, but Murphy was not. Not anymore, anyway. Time had been the key to the gravity equation. Time was knowable and knowledge had never failed her. Time was not a foe. Time was an ally. Murphy counted on it for her upcoming meeting with NASA. She had to convince the board that her solution worked and that they could indeed fling the station through the wormhole and to their new home, provided that the Endurance had located one. First, however, they had to convince the panicked, squabbling governments of Earth that this was a viable alternative and get a no doubt reluctant population to embark on the ultimate one-way journey. It would not be easy, but yesterday, it had been unattainable. In Murphy's view, that was progress.

NASA's was not Murphy's immediate destination, once she exited her nephew's wardroom. Her most pressing concern might have seemed trivial compared to saving the human race, but the nagging voice of guilt inside her head would not let her do otherwise. No matter how many time Murphy told herself she couldn't have known, she still felt sometimes like she had abandoned her family to chase after her dead mentor's lie. The truth was that just like her father, she had wanted to leave their miserable farm and the school with its narrow-minded teachers. She had wanted to learn and do something that wasn't the rote, soul-killing task of growing corn on an unforgivable land for the vague promise that it would get better. Maybe she had always suspected that it wouldn't. Whatever the reason, she had wanted to leave, and once she had, she had never wished to look back. She wanted to be free and study the universe, not languish in the stuffy air of failing crops and hopelessness.

She trailed through the crowded hallways of the hospital where her friend, Getty, worked and towards his office. What remained of the police was in way over their heads trying to maintain some semblance of order among the people on the run from the global agricultural catastrophe. Even if things were different, Murphy would not have turned in her brother for the incident at their farm. Her own lingering guilt notwithstanding, that was not what Tom needed right now.

Her brother was crumpled in a chair in Getty's office, face hidden in his hands. He looked up with red-rimmed and grimy eyes, when she entered. His face was dirty, smudged with smoke and dirt, lips cracked and beard in disarray. Anger had leaked out of him, leaving only desolation in its wake. Tender pity welled up in Murph then. He seemed so lost. She flashed back to the happy and optimistic boy he had once been. Tom was not built for death and disasters. He was meant to live a quiet life on an idyllic farm, grow old and fat and be surrounded by grand-children. A lump worked its way up Murph's throat and she rushed to her brother's side, knelt by his seat and wrapped her arms around him.

"Murph… I… Murph," he choked.

She tried to rock him back and forth, like she imagined their long-dead mother had to have. "Shhh… it's okay, Tom. Lois and Coop will be fine and we're going to get you help," she promised and silently vowed to keep it.


	2. Chapter 2

After having buried the man she loved, Amelia Brand took the Ranger and together with CASE, she went for a tour of her new home planet. It was the forth in a system of only six planets revolving around a G-type main-sequence star not too dissimilar from the Sun only larger and brighter. Its sharp light seemed almost white filtering through the dense atmosphere, which was thankfully rich in oxygen. The planet was massive, almost twice as big as Earth. Amelia could feel the burden of the extra gravity but she could manage and felt grateful no massive waves were in sight. The planet also had no moons, but as she entered the night half, the rose-tinted skies were less dark and speckled with the glittering pinpoints of distant stars. Gargantua was not visible, but Amelia felt its presence as a looming shadow reflecting its heart of darkness over her and Wolf's precious find.

Wolf Edmunds had crashed on an arid, rock-marred plateau that offered little in terms of life, but as she advanced through the southern hemisphere, the near desert turned into lush prairies, and the sensors of the Ranger lit up with thermal signatures. CASE confirmed the findings: the planet definitely had animal life, though small in size and rather rare, despite the promises of the rich vegetation. Then the planes gave away to an ocean that was as vast as the Ranger readings could reach so she climbed up towards the equator. Air temperature rose with her climb going up with 40 Celsius and over then dropped abruptly, as she had to swerve the Ranger to avoid colliding into a mountain range straight ahead. Fortunately she wasn't the same person as the one who had left Earth and had gleaned some survival instincts from Cooper in the meantime. Her heart gave a painful squeeze at the thought of Coop. Where was he now? Did he live still? That he somehow could have made it home was too absurd of a notion to entertain, yet she refused to stop believing, even as she knew Coop would only get to Earth to die there together with the rest of her kind.

The gravity equation could not be solved. Her own father had betrayed them all. Guilt gnawed at her insides, twisting her stomach into knots. How could she have not seen? But the answer was blatant: she trusted people and her faith in her father had been absolute. She had trusted him not only as a parent but also as a mentor and scientist. Suddenly CASE drew her attention to another peak right before the angular mass filled the view screen. The Ranger lurched, as they wrestled it off course collision. The action sobered her, wrenching her from her grim reverie and thrusting her into the spectacular reality of her new home planet. She couldn't think of all that was and all those who weren't. Earth was lost. She was alone, fated to be the only human being left alive in the whole universe.

No, not the only one. There were still the ice-encased embryos in the sanctuary of the Endurance. New lives at their most vulnerable were dependant on her. She was all they had in this new world. They would not remember Earth, but maybe that wasn't such a bad thing. Past the mountains she discovered more plains and plateaus and a violent storm. None of Earth's baggage would haunt the new colony. None of humanity's past evil resided here, just nature and its forces, and also ample opportunities to build a life. A fresh start. A new paradise. She hoped she was worthy of being its Eve.

# # #

Once it had become apparent that the blight was planetary, the food riots had begun and the US government ordered the NASA administrator to bomb the starving population from orbit. The administrator had locked himself in his office and put a gun in his mouth. The rest of NASA scientists refused to go along with mass murder. It had been the end of American NASA. But when Professor Brand and his team had confirmed that it was only a matter of time, until the pathogen killed the last viable crops, too, space had been the last resort left, if humanity were to endure. So NASA had been reconstituted but on a very different basis. It couldn't have been otherwise, since the remnants of the United States barely scraped by and it took every tiny resource the whole planet could set aside to power up the Agency again and sponge all the way to what would later become the Lazarus Mission.

The new NASA closely resembled the cooperation mechanism that had once made the International Space Station possible, complete with its multilateral coordination board. It was no surprise that, practical considerations aside, the Endurance had ended up looking like the now defunct International Space Station. The presidency was rotational, but back when Professor Brand had been alive, he had been the de facto leader of the board both on the grounds of his scientific authority, force of personality and his fundamental role in setting up the Lazarus Mission and the one of the Endurance. The reverence for him outlived him and it was in no small part due to it that she maintained her lab and privileged position of NASA. But that was not she had kept her mentor's horrible betrayal from NASA and just about everyone else. She had told a vague account of it to Getty during that dark knight of the soul she had experienced the day Professor Brand had died leaving her with the indomitable truth as his only legacy. But that had been all and her friend had kept her secret.

Murphy had opened her mouth to tell of what Brand had done many times, but the words had never come out. She could not tell them that the very man who had given them hope after the discovery that the blight would spell the end of mankind had appointed himself to the position to decide how said mankind was to be saved. The sheer arrogance of it cut deep. Murph was still smarting from it, yet she still couldn't bring herself to destroy the reputation of a man once regarded like a modern Alfred Eisenstein or Stephen Hawking. So she had continued to search for a solution quietly and ardently, refusing to give up and refusing to make public her would-be adoptive father's treachery. That had been then, but a day ago, everything changed, and as news rolled in of more and more frantic people leaving their homes in search of a non-existent oasis of clean air and still living crops, she knew the time to take action had all but run out, which was ironic, given what her now solved gravity equation proved about time.

Her actual father had not abandoned her. She had yet to figure out exactly how, but he had saved them all. She paused to stroke her watch before returning to the memorandum regulating the NASA board. Legalese was not among the languages she spoke. It contained too much ambiguity and too little _**mathematical**_ purity for her taste. However, physics was not the only Professor Brand had taught her. Part of his authority over NASA came from his choice to deal with the board members one-to-one instead of collectively as a group. For that she had to go with her solution and the suggestion of the radical action to follow to the one member who least respected Professor Brand. 

# # # 

Dust. Amelia Brand shivered despite the blistering heat. The sand of the large desert covering the north pole of the new world was so fine, it closely resembled dust. There was no ice like on Earth. Only dust. The wind swept it up in the air blowing it into fantastic shapes that stretched as far as she could see under the sunburned skies. It all looked quite surreal and she was enthralled despite the swarm of painful memories the dust-like sand evoked. She stood there by her parked Ranger, CASE at her side, for as long as she could bear the punishing rays of the local star. She really needed to name the system, its star and the planet she was on.


	3. Chapter 3

"HALL, what's your discretion setting?"

"Where you are concerned or where everybody else is, Doctor Cooper?"

Murphy thought for a beat. "Both."

"Where your discretion is involved, 100%, for the rest, I have none."

A slight grin played on Murphy's lips. "What was the point of contention between Professor Brand and Mr. Rerberg?"

"I do not know, but I've heard other board members discussing it. The prevalent sentiment is that the Russian representative simply did not trust the Professor."

Murphy nodded more to herself than to her robot companion, a former combat unit repurposed for NASA use, similar to the ones deployed to the Endurance. She had renamed it HALL, because she thought this class of androids looked just like the monolith from _2001: A Space Odyssey_ but thought that particular denomination would be too long and superfluous.

"Thank you," she said even as she was keenly aware the courtesy was unnecessary. Back when films like _2001_ had been made, people had feared their own creations would one day take over them. To that day humans apparently couldn't stop anthropomorphizing robots one way or another even with prototypes specifically designed to avoid that. HALL didn't have a discretion setting for anyone else but her not because he liked her, but because Professor Brand had it refitted that way. The lingering, small touches of affection of her mentor for her did not to alleviate the sting of his betrayal. If anything, at times such as now, it made it worse.

Murphy walked out of her office and into the tiny adjoining bathroom. Like most people working for NASA, she lived in the underground compound that was its headquarters. It was safe than on the surface and prevented security breaches. She splashed cold water on her face before lifting her eyes to study her countenance in the mirror above the sink. The past sleepless forty-eight hours showed. She was pale and dark circles had imprinted themselves around blood-shot eyes. She combed wet fingers through her tangled hair and then tied it in a more secure knot. She decided to change her shirt. Her few interactions with Rerberg had been frostily polite and it couldn't hurt her to look as professional as possible for her meeting with him. 

# # #

Wolf Edmunds had never for a second imagined that his planet would be the one. It seemed right and natural for Doctor Mann's to turn out to be humanity's new cradle. So when he caught sight of the clouds canopy blanketing the forth planet of the tertiary star-system orbiting the supermassive black hole near which the wormhole ended, his first reaction was not one of elation or relief but a disbelief bordering on shock. Yet the evidence of both his eyes and his pod's computers was undeniable: a gigantic splotch of indigo stained the southern atmosphere—water . As far as he could see, the ocean seemed to be the only one, the rest of planet covered in swirling shades of gold and brown. There were, however, spots of faint green within the same southern atmosphere. He checked, re-checked and then quadruple-checked his instruments. The data stayed the same: vapors of water and oxygen in the atmosphere, the pressure of which was just right for the water to remain liquid on the surface.

The gravity of such a large planet might pose a bit of a challenge at first, but it wouldn't be an insurmountable one. A dessert planet. That in itself was not a problem, since it would have a more extensive habitable area than a watery one. The irony of humanity being met with dust whenever it went struck him and he grinned at the thought. A wave of longing swept over him at that. He knew who would also appreciate that, but she was twenty-one billion light years away in another galaxy. It was no matter. Soon she would be on her way here. Soon they would all be on their way here, for he didn't doubt Professor Brand could solve the gravity equation. Doctor Mann could spirit the greatest enterprise in human history, but there hadn't been a physicist like Brand since Hawking.

Wolf gingerly maneuvered his craft to leave orbit and enter the planet's atmosphere. He had to confirm his findings with samples from the surface then he could send sign of the good news back to Earth. The small ship rocked around him, red flashes of warning coalescing on the screen in front of him. His stomach lurched. He worked frantically albeit a little clumsily to figure out what had gone wrong. He was not a pilot but particle physicist and his only experience with flying came from the simulator. Real life had so far proved to be brutally different. There had been no more pilots left on Earth to send on this mission and with the whole race facing the ultimate deadline, they couldn't delay the precise timetable comprised by Lazarus for the arduous and lengthy process of selecting and training new ones. Besides, they needed scientists like him up here, too, and their already stretched to the limit resources would not allow for so many two-person missions. Time was a luxury they no longer had.

The ship angled dangerously, as it continued its too fast descent. Wolf was only partially in control, when he identified the problem: it had been of his doing—he had entered the atmosphere at too steep of an angle. Sweat ran down his back and on the side of his face. He had already tried what he had been taught to do in simulation and he had not managed to redress the craft. The friction with the atmosphere made it wobble, as it was heating it up. With his heart pounding in his ears, Wolf thought. He would crash, but he could not let the saving grace of the planet perish with him.

He began encoding the data gathered from orbit for the transmission back to NASA, hoping, praying it would be enough. It had to be. Even if he had not dared dream his planet would be the one, that didn't change the fact that it looked good on paper: its system had a main-sequence star and it was the farthest one from Gargantua, which made it the safest from its gravitational distortions. Even if the others doubted, she would know and come. She had to and he had to hope. His pod blasted past a line of mountain tops: tall and rocky-looking, dominating a dessert landscape strewn with gravel. He stirred the ship to avoid impact, but the maneuver, unsteady as it had been, cost him the last measure of control he had of the controls. From there on, the pod wafted unevenly towards the stony ground.

Hands shaking, he finished preparing his curt, formula-laden message and initiated the transmission. The craft rocked violently and he found himself propelled forward, his chest colliding painfully with his console. Smoke and the scent of burnt fuel began to fill his claustrophobic cabin. He attempted to eject himself, but the screen around him had gone dark, the systems aboard no longer responding. The tail of the ship had hit something and as a result, it was plummeting even faster. He was desperate to know his communiqué had been sent, but no longer had the means to check it. He was thrown off chair, as the belly of the ship dragged loudly against the rocks. Pain erupted on his side, as a deafening howl covered the whirr of the dying ship instruments. Flames licked at one of his legs and he tried to shake them off. Then, it all stopped. Small pieces, most likely pebbles, pelted the shell of his ship. It was all quiet now and the shaking had stopped. Wolf's eyes were watery and he could perceive little past smoke and fire. He dragged himself to the nearby exit, as the pain that that bled into his middle and left foot didn't let him stand. The bent door gave way at his weak push and his head and torso spilled outside underneath the skies of their new home.

The first lungful of air didn't choke him but filled his nostrils with a fresh, clean scent not too different from the one left behind by a summer storm. He glanced up to an azure sky streaked with even bluer clouds. It was cold or maybe he was just cold from the shock. Either way, he shivered. Then he heard it. Another howl, louder and closer seeming than the one before. His crash had to have started a rock slide and from the sound of it, it was closing in on him.

"Amelia," he murmured. "I found it… I found us a home." Then he knew nothing.

The office of the Russian board member was cluttered with furniture and computers, the only mark of personality in it the high quality reproduction of Bruegel's _The Hunters in the Snow_ on the wall behind the desk. Said desk was occupied by a man in his mid forties with narrow and slanted dark eyes that regarded her with a lot of suspicion. His rigid and impeccably straight posture betrayed his military background. Russia had been among the last countries to give up its army, despite the inability to sustain it, and as such it still had many former officers working in various civilian capacities. A tiny TV set was squeezed between thick folders and books on the narrow shelf by the door. It played hazy, static-afflicted imagines to a Russian voice-over. One didn't need to understand the language to get the basic message, as the tone was heavy with grief. The pictures were familiar to Murph: people in old, decrepit vehicles fleeing a growing sea of dust. This one was probably the once fertile Russian Plain.

"Alexei Ivanov," Murphy said, adhering to Russian rules of politeness by addressing him by his given name and patronymic. "Thank you for seeing me on such short notice."

He arched at eyebrow at that, but he was perfectly civil when he invited her to sit across the desk from him.

Murphy had a carefully prepared speech for the occasion, but the reminder of the truly global scale of their predicament made it seem somehow inappropriate. So she just mutely extended him the folder she had brought in with her. He opened it with a puzzled frown.

"I don't believe this is in language we both have in common," he told her benignly.

"It's the Brand gravity equation. I solved it," she explained.

"Professor Brand spent most of his life working on it with no result and you just happened to solve it one day."

"I also sent a copy to Doctor Tereshkova at Baikonur. She can verify my findings and report back to you."

He snapped her folder on the desk in front of him and leaned back in his chair, hands stapled beneath his chin. "I believe you."

Some of her shock had to have shown on her face, because he went on: "Professor Brand was an old man who had managed to get his only family off planet while it was still safe. Whatever happened to the Endurance out there, it can't be worse than being stuck down here in a dwindling atmosphere. But you're trapped here as well. And so are your brother and his family."

Anger rose within her at the intimation that his only motivation to solve the equation had been the selfish need for self-preservation. It felt like a slap to the face, because she agreed with him about Professor Brand. For his gal to make decisions for all mankind was nothing short of supreme ego and arrogance. Who had given him the godlike right to choose who lived and who died? Who was expandable and who was to be left behind? How could he have written off a planet full of people, only to selfishly put his daughter on the only ship out? In that instant, the worst of her mentor's betrayal came back to her and Murphy was momentarily blinded by rage. In the uncomfortable silence of the room, a mournful Russian voice talked over people running through grime-infested air to nowhere.

Rerberg broke the quiet spell with a dismissive hand gesture. "I know why you came to me first," he said. "You believe that if you can convince me, then you'll have it easy with the rest of the board. You're wrong. We can't hide the dying of the corn and the impact of the blight on the atmosphere any longer. How do you think people will react, once it gets out that NASA knew of all this for decades but kept it a secret only to focus not on finding a solution but on the insane task of propelling the survivors into another galaxy by way of a wormhole supposedly put there by a mysterious yet benevolent alien race?"

Murphy froze. Politics had never been her strong suit. She was operating blind here. After so many years spent concentrating solely on solving the equation, it had never occurred to her that a starved, aggrieved humanity might not be so keen on abandoning its besieged home after all.

"Then what you propose we do?" she countered. "Wait for our oxygen supply to run out? Provided that we don't all starve to death first, of course."

He shook his head. "No! That's why I'm going to support you in front of the board and… well, anyone else. Just don't expect this to be easy."

"Thank you," she breathed, her gratitude genuine.

He smirked. "Don't thank me just yet. The board is set to convene the day after tomorrow. Be there and we'll see what we can do."

Murphy nodded, left with nothing else to say. She had a lot to ponder in the privacy of her office, while contemplating the immediate future. She got to her feet, saying good-bye as she did.

"Doctor Cooper," he called after her, once she had reached the door.

Murphy pivoted on a heel.

"This would be wasted on me," he told her, holding up the folder she had given him.

As she made the short trip back to retrieve it, she caught from the corner of the eye the changing story on the TV: it was now showing what looked like an exposé on the pandemic of lung diseases.


End file.
